


Another Path Taken

by Merfilly



Category: Elfquest
Genre: F/M, Post-Apocalypse, Survival, if you define apocalypse as the death of the life they had known, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 13:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: Another band of survivors from the Palace, and the path they took





	Another Path Taken

**Author's Note:**

> This one is not truly spooky, but it was inspired by the prompts given, so I'm adding it. Taking liberties by creating a different band, maybe one that eventually makes it down to the Waveriders...

It was a catastrophe.

Their ship was crippled.

The people here were murderous.

The servants had fled after the sabotage.

Magic failed to come to their call, or devastated everything.

Danar looked the way they had come, she and her double handful of companions that had escaped the treachery. Smoke still billowed in the distance, where Chzon had called on magic, only to have it escape her control, setting the woods they had sheltered in ablaze.

They needed to find a new home, need to help Chzon learn to control the magic so they could have fire reliably, to stay warm and to heat those things they had learned were food.

Nearby, Kailn was viewing the path ahead, not behind, and she felt another challenge to her authority was coming. She might not have been of the Circle of Nine, but she had held her wits to guide them away from the slaughter. She had been the first to prove their bodies could survive on the food around them.

Unfortunately, it had been Kailn, full of rage and grief over lost family and friends, that had been the first to kill a furbearer, the one to insist that such things must be worn. And, after killing enough of the larger plant eaters, they had been heartier for the hides, smelly as they were.

Chzon had accidentally learned that if she plunged her hands into water, anything in it could be heated without flames escaping her. That gave them boiled meat and other things that tried to eat.

"We will follow the river," Danar said firmly. "Other worlds have shown us that rivers go to seas, and seas are known for having many things we lack. All of us must push at memories from our journeys, to find the skills we need. Only together can we survive."

"And of the others?" Kailn asked, as he had too many times when they came to a place where a choice was needed.

"We know not if any survived the slaughter," Danar said firmly. "Let us see to our own needs, before we chase down danger such as happened at the Great Egg."

Kailn frowned, but he bowed his head. "As you will, Danar."

* * *

Kailn stretched the latest hide around the ring of wood Chzon had shaped by heating the water around it and bending it. If this worked…

…they would finally have a way to go past the cliffs and the five-fingered ones that tried to kill them. They could float, like a leaf, along the far edge that brushed the cliffs, instead of trekking along the more open side.

He looked at Chzon, the elf that was now growing large in the belly. First of the next generation, Danar said. Kailn frowned to think of her, irritated that she kept taking them away from the others. What had become of Aerth, or Timmain? Surely someone on the Circle had survived!

Yet, several changes of the season had passed, and no elf had crossed their path, always moving down along this river, stopping for a time here and there, only to be chased by their enemy. What even were they anymore, eating meat they had killed and boiled, wearing the skins of their kills, and even now looking at using such primitive things to escape a culture that violently opposed their existence?

Idly, he realized that if he was successful, this would be one more step away from all the possible survivors. Somewhere behind them were the other elves; he refused to believe that their own group was all that had survived!

He got the hide lashed, and looked it over. This would be a way forward for their people, for this band of elves in a forbidding world, but what were they moving toward? Was it worth what they were leaving behind?

"Kailn, the child… I think it may be time," Chzon said suddenly, breaking his thoughts.

The hunter moved quickly, going to support their firecaster back to her den, dug into the earth itself. Danar met them, and for once, that gave Kailn relief. He met her eyes…

…and all of his experience twisted into a narrow view of her, of children, of a future that existed on this world for them, through their children. He could see, smell, and hear her with more vivid awareness than ever, and he… he wanted to nest with her, make a child like Chzon and Harrak had.

As she broke the gaze, looking down, he saw color come up in her cheeks, and knew she had been hit with it as well.

"We should talk, later," she said in a low aside to him, before they got Chzon comfortable, to try and make this new life come forth into this world without suffering too greatly.

"Later," he agreed.

* * *

Talking was… limited. Sending had worked out their conflict of concerns, as each found the other had those same doubts. Danar wanted to know about the others, but pushed on for the sake of survival. Kailn pushed on to learn all the survival skills he could, but he ached to know what become of the others.

With that new understanding, there was no bar to making the union their bodies and souls now demanded. Pleasure was something the elves had experimented with at different points in their explorations, but this was so much more visceral. There was a limitation of flesh, even as her soul claimed his, and his marked hers.

There would be another child to join Chzon's tiny infant. And the others of their band, they would be drawn to mate, to make more. This world rejected their magic, breaking so much of who they were, but they would be reshaped, and their children would actually be of this world.

Danar had glimpsed that in the moment she came to see Kailn as a piece of her, a needed complement to her own way of leading. They would find a place, yes, but it would be the children that thrived here. And some day, their bloodlines would, with any luck, find the lines that other survivors had made.


End file.
